Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Correct.

Also they don't need to worry about tracking, they don't need cap for their guns, they don't need to worry about their range to the enemy (only their sentries range).. Other platforms that put out similar DPS need to actually fit a solid tank, cause they need to be at point blank range.. Ishtars can put out the same DPS, but be 100km away with Drone Links and sebo's.. Not to mention they are immune to EWAR, ECM, TC's, Damps, have no effect on their ability to apply DPS.

Agree or disagree that they are OP, the point is, all this talk about sentries is strictly about ONE Hull. Ishtars. Stratios with Sentries isn't OP. Myrm with Sentries isn't OP. Yet they are getting hit with the nerf hammer because CCP doesn't want to, or is unable to address Ishtars.

The community has overwhelmingly spoken: we have told CCP Fozzie the most workable solution. Instead, he sticks his fingers in his ears, and says, essentially " No matter what I say I will make 90% of you mad, therefore, I know best." Unfortunately for Fozzie, the majority of us are saying the same thing: cruisers (read-the Ishtar) should not have a Battleship weapons platform and have provided various solutions to this problem. Instead of listening to the community, the clients , the spokesperson for CCP says "the CSM wanted us to to do more."

CCP Fozzie and the CSM's voices are overwhelmed by the vast majority of the clients, a.k.a.the players, saying, very simply: " YOU GOT IT WRONG."


Bottom line: there is a reverse power creep, aka a "nerf creep" on sentries at work here. Multiple and varied platforms which have drone bonuses that use sentries are just fine: the Dominix and the Armageddon are probably the most widely used; however, there are other sub capital vessels that can field sentries, too and are therefore affected by this nerf: including the Eos, Myrmidon, the Nestor, Sin, Stratios and Vexor Navy. These vessels do not need a nerf at the present time. Fozzie mentioned some of these vessels in his post, but where is the data to support his conclusions, empirical or otherwise. While possible, I would be surprised to learn that fleets of VNI's or Armageddons are out there destroying every fleet encountered. Is it possible? Yes. Likely? No. Are the above hulls useful for other reasons, including, but not limited to mainline pve, skirmish pvp and roles within large pvp with their respective drone bonus intact? Yes.

The big offender here is the Ishtar. I happen to love the vessel but I both see and appreciate the bigger picture: Do not nerf an entire weapons system when the overwhelming problem is one **** hull.

Does the community always get it right? No, we don't. But in this instance a cacophony of voices are presenting well reasoned arguments why Fozzie and his team made a mistake. This situation is reminiscent of f the jump changes as applied to JF's. Former CCP Greyscale listened to the community, mea culpa-ed and acted accordingly. I hope Fozzie does the same. I sincerely doubt it, but I have hope.

So, inspired by the communities reaction to this, and the repeated pointing out that the ishtar and dominix share a similar bonus which is powerful enough to distort how sentries are viewed and used, I put up a thread devoted to fixing those two bonuses, and any other overly powerful dual bonuses people bring to it.

Eagle also isn't REMOTELY cap stable, ishtar just YOLOs about with better cap than most laser ships.

Also, try jamming a 100mn on any other HAC maintaining full firepower....

Lets see, trained towards one OP ship, then another OP ship, then a weapon system nerf specific to a single OP variety of medium hybrids. Gila needs a bit of a bay reduction to bring it in line for staying power, but everything else there ought to be fine. At least it isn't anything like as bad as the TE nerf, or the battlecruiser nuke.

I haven't been playing this game for the last decade like some folks. I have been playing for the under a year. I didn't choose the kind of ship I wanted to train towards because it was the "meta" or flavor of the month. I wanted to fly it because it was the type of platform that I wanted to fly. However, within the last year. I have seen numerous changes to kill every single platform that I have trained towards. Drones ships!

I think it is silly to nerf the weapon system so badly... like they did with the Medium Hybrids. Which is used on a lot more ships than just the few OP platforms that made the numbers appear off. Same thing goes for Sentries. Sentries are not the problem. The problem is the couple of small hull bonused platforms being used in large alliance meta.

These are pointless and endless changes. So if you kill sentries and ishtars and all drone ships for that matter. You will just end up with another ship type or weapon system that is OP that the large allainces adopt. Than again CCP will pull out the nerf bat. So then other people that have trained into those ships and weapon systems, have a bunch of skill that they have spent lost of time and money training toward made to be worth "less" and be not as useful as they were today (when they were not considered OP today).

Yes but consider this:
You fly and own OP ship A.
OP ship A gets nerfed to Very Strong.
There are other Very Strong ships, but you don't own them nor are fully trained into them.
What will you fly? You will likely still fly ship A.

It takes a long time for a small change to have a wide spread impact. If they nerfed the Ishtar so that 3-4 other ships are cleary better than it, then you would see a much more rapid change in ship use. But over-nerfing is bad for games. We don't want that.

The Ishtar might still be too strong, but only more time will tell for sure.

Medium rails got nerfed, and they needed it, bad. 250s had almost the same DPS as blasters, the best range, low cap use and reasonably priced ammo. They obsoleted anything else that can go on a medium hull but drones beyond scram range.
As for the other part of hybrids, blasters remain blasters. lovable, epic damage, and all the range you expect from someone in a wheelchair trying to punch you.

Sentries are part of the problem. The other side is the hulls. A big part of the problem with ishtars is the combo of great applied DPS at range with all the fitting room in the world if you don't decide to fit guns and just rely on the strongly bonused drones. The other HACs could theoretically murder ishtars (other than the eagle) if there was more nearly damage parity, or range parity.

As for drone ships in general, they are epic in part because drone damage amps and other drone bonused equipment was added without a strong look at polishing the drones themselves along with them, and the synergistic effects between the modules, the drones and the hulls took them from being "okay, I guess, but remember that drones aren't a primary weapon" to "why bother fitting guns? you can just use drones and neuts" and there was no loss of fitting room or more than the 1 slot to bring them back closer into line.

can literally drop a 100mn AB into most shield ishtar setups in place of a 10mn micro without any change.
Can make 100mn AB and 1600 plate work on the same cruiser, something nothing only it and t3s can do.

You do know that an Ishtar can carry 3 sets of sentries in total, right? That usually means 1 or 2 types with 1 to 2 spares sets. I highly doubt that having a spare set of sentry drones is what makes the Ishtar too good.